##plugins.themes.bootstrap3.article.main##

Vilhelmina Vaičiūnienė Viktorija Mažeikienė

Abstract

Various interest-driven groups and communities emerge due to human creativity, creative efforts of individuals, contemporary information sharing culture and accumulation of knowledge through networking. Meanwhile, constant innovations give impetus to the development of societal life and its multiple dimensions. The greatest change in education brought by the new technologies, which are still becoming more and more social in their nature, is the emergence of the new paradigm, where the two – learning and teaching – processes have become one. Creativity cannot be separated from knowledge building in contemporary society. This article focuses on creativity in relation to networked learning/teaching and the development of deeper cognitive skills of students and draws on three viewpoints from contemporary research literature pertaining to the phenomenon of creativity: Czikszentmihalyi’s systems theory, the investment theory developed by Sternberg and Lubart and a group of viewpoints focusing on problem solving and finding. In relation to networked learning/teaching and the development of deeper cognitive skills at university level, creativity may be seen as related to critical literacy – critical reading and writing skills, analytical skills, ability to make judgements about texts, ability to create texts (printed, digital, visual, multimodal, etc.) as well as ability to apply the acquired information and skills in everyday life, work and task performance in order to implement changes in one’s social environment. In Web 2.0 era, the new social technologies supply multiple tools for creation, publication, assessment and critique. The tools are very important in education. Higher education institutions face the necessity to make use of the opportunities offered by the technologies so that they remain relevant for students, who need a range of skills to be successful in contemporary society: digital literacy, media literacy, critical literacy, collaboration and communication skills, unlearning old skills and re-learning new skills, i.e. what is often referred to as multiple literacies of the 21st century.

##plugins.themes.bootstrap3.article.details##

Section
Articles